B is for Bread

This piece was written for and will be aired next week on a monthly programme called The Deli, which I help to produce for a local radio station  www.elfm.co.uk   Perhaps a strange choice for the last day of the festival of Passover during which I have not eaten any!

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Born and Bred

For me, the smell of fresh bread is unparalleled. My father owned a delicatessen, before they were in vogue.  I remember having to get up first thing on a Sunday morning, no matter how late we'd been out the night before, to empty boxes of bread which were delivered by at least four different local bakeries. These large, wooden tea chests with strips of tin to hold them together were left outside his shop early in the morning full of bagels, bread cakes and rolls, small and large white loaves, pumpernickel and sweet and sour loaves. Our hands were sore and splintered from emptying the goods on to shelves and into drawers.  Just thinking about it evokes the aroma of freshly baked dough competing with that from the salami, pickled meat and herring.   All our customers had their favourite baker and preferences - soft bagels, well-done bagels, bread cakes with poppy seeds or without, and we knew what all our customers wanted before they even asked.      At home, we ate the bread, bagels and rolls made by my mother; tin loaves for weekdays, plaited for the Sabbath and round ones for festivals.  Her baking was the envy of our friends, who loved to sample it straight from the oven.  She issued the same warning every time - “you’ll get indigestion” – but we neither knew what that was, or cared.  However, when it came to taking our packed lunches to school, we used to wish that our sandwiches were made from the evenly cut, thin slices of shop-bought white bread cut into triangles that everyone else brought.   .................................................................................................................... Sadly, we have no jewish bakers left in our town, but check out this film made by the kids at the Youth Club.

http://hansel2012.org/films/where-did-all-bagels-go